Saturday, 14 January 2017

BAD NEWS BITES - Farmed Salmon/Seafood Industry, Updated May 4, 2017

I receive more than 20 global fish farm newsletters every week. In these, I have found a startling amount of bad news, and decided to do a post on it. I had no idea there was as much bad news as there is.

I am at my fourth post, and in little more than a year, I have found more than 1100 BAD NEWS BITES. Some days I am stunned by the amount of bad news in the fish farm/seafood industry. As of April 30/17, you can add another 500 BAD NEWS BITES, from this post, or more than 1,600 BAD NEWS stories since July 1/15, less than two years.

That post has links to the other BAD NEWS BITES posts. Skim down the bold facing and be prepared to see more bad news in an industry than you might ever have imagined.

Here is a summary of the bad news:

"In one mouthful, here are the kind of stories I am finding: boom bust industry,
billions made and lost, crisis in lice and disease, workers fired, executives
jumping company to company, dividing big bonuses, fraud, corruption, litigation,
conflict of interest with government and scientists, using the ocean as a free
open sewer – $10.4 Billion in BC alone, killing of whales, seals and sea lions – more
than 12,000 in BC so far, slavery, unpaid labour, taxpayers paying millions for
diseased, dead fish – $177 Million in Canada, dueling scientists, weakening of
laws, unsustainable feed, illegal fishing, jail sentences, disasters in Norway, Scotland,
Chile, Canada, bullying of scientists, governments and anyone critical of their
business, cartels, collusion, price fixing, fishing down the food chain to
Antarctic krill, carcinogens and persistent organic pollutants,
fluoroquinolones, chicken feathers in feed, animal feces in feed,
eutrophication in a time of global warming, Malachite Green fungicide in USA
seafood, fake industry awards, all the wild salmon in the Pacific ocean, more
than a billion, put in peril... it goes on."

Look at the last post as it shows the CEO of the company that owns Marine Harvest, John Fredriksen, selling half a billion dollars in stock on the bet that the share price will drop so he can make money buying it back.

I have made a new post on May 5, 2017.

And now the list of BAD NEWS BITES, January 14, 2017 to May 5, 2017 (yes, this is almost 150 bad news stories per month):

481. Untransparent Industry/Government - Tassal, Tasmania. Read this one, the ABC news account uncovered all the usual refusals by industry and government to release information, after Tassal failed to report fish deaths, then claimed release was not justified, and government said it was a competitive disadvantage, and the industry 'voluntarily' submits info, and no follow up was reported. The FOI took, if you can believe it, two years. The usual: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-01/tassal-fails-to-report-rise-in-fish-deaths-in-macquarie-harbour/8487550.

477. DFO is the Habitat Problem - "Here’s what most folks say again: research pathogens and disease from
fish farms; ban them from the ocean; implement a “net gain” habitat
policy instead of “no net loss,” a loophole for developers; remediate
fish habitat lost to urbanization (Cultus Lake’s sockeye was sacrificed
when DFO refused to save spawning ground for fish of “insignificant
value”); restore productive habitat upstream of flood control structures
in B.C." See: http://www.mapleridgenews.com/opinion/along-the-fraser-where-do-they-stand-on-fish/.

472. Antibiotics - Germany/Norway huge use ethoxyquine: https://www.greenpeace.de/presse/presseerklaerungen/greenpeace-analyse-chemie-speisefisch.
" All 38 fish samples from conventional aquaculture are contaminated. Of
these 32 samples are clearly above the limit value for meat (50 μg /
kg). At 881 μg / kg, the highest ethoxyquine load is a salmon product
from a Norwegian aquaculture (Stremellachs from Real) - an exceedance of
the meat threshold of more than 17 times. Fish samples from organic
aquaculture are clearly below the meat limit - with one exception
(organic salmon fillet, Edeka, 155 μg / kg). Ethoxyquin is usually not
present in organic food. However, it may occur in other substances added
during feeding. No ethoxyquin was detected in wild catches since they
are not fed. The fish samples are from German supermarkets and
biomarkers." Google Translate.

446. Antibiotics - Huge Use in Chile, 2015 article: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-salmon-antibiotics-feature-idUSKCN0PX1IG20150723.
"Unable to develop an effective vaccine [to SRS],
Chilean farmers have been forced to increase antibiotic use. In 2014,
the industry produced around 895,000 tonnes of fish and used 563,200
kilograms (1.2 million pounds) of antibiotics, according to government
and industry data. Antibiotic use had risen 25 percent from 2013. In
contrast, Norway, the world's largest salmon producer, produced around
1.3 million tonnes of fish and used 972 kilos of antibiotics in 2013."

444. Antibiotic Resistance - spreads far and wide with tide. Chile, 124 bacteria isolates from fish farms and 8km away, 81% had antibiotic resistance, to antibiotics used: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24612265. "Resistance to tetracycline was most commonly encoded by tetA and tetG;
to trimethoprim, by dfrA1, dfrA5 and dfrA12; to sulfamethizole, by sul1
and sul2; to amoxicillin, by blaTEM ; and to streptomycin, by strA-strB" This means in human antibiotics, and, resistance genes could be transferred to E. Coli, a human, warmblooded bacteria.

443. Bust and Boom - bust for in-ocean farms, boom for on-land farms: http://asf.ca/for-land-based-salmon-farming-the-numbers-now-make-sense.html. Q: "land-based production costs and traditional sea-based costs are
converging at NOK 35–37/kg head-on gutted. The major driver of this is
the rapid increase in health-related costs for open net pen farming,”
the bank [DNB] said." Ha, Ha. And, as I have been saying, the cost of transport is high, too, meaning near-market farms have an advantage: "production in RAS facilities – and with the advantage of being built in
the US or Asia, that is to say, near to the market – puts the production
cost per kg of HOG salmon on a par with traditional open net pens, at
NOK 37/kg." And: “No new license have been awarded since 2014, when SalMar bid NOK 66
million for a license. Since then, the Seafood Index (OSLSFX) has
doubled, suggesting the market value of a license is also higher.” NOK 66m is $10.6 CDN million. Why isn't NL and BC, NB and NS charging the same? Or more? And, finally: "Since June 2016 Norway's directorate of fisheries has begun allocating
land-based farming licenses without fees, further helping on the
start-up costs." Yes, it's an $11 million subsidy per license.

"No new licenses have been awarded since 2014 [in Norway], when SalMar bid NOK 66
million for a license [$10.56 million Canadian]. Since then, the Seafood Index (OSLSFX) has
doubled, suggesting the market value of a license is also higher.” This puts the Grieg Seafood licence subsidy in NL at $116 million - before the $45M offered to set up shop. Crazy.

356. Lice Treatments Add Cost - Treatment to control lice infestations in Norwegian salmon farms increased from 2013 to 2014 (Jansen et al., 2016)
and represented in 2014 an estimated average cost of 2-5 NOK per kg
produced salmon, or 9–23% of the total production cost per kg salmon (Iversen et al., 2015). Note that 2 to 5 NOK is about $.32 CDN to $.8. See: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0044848616304537. The study notes that lice are eliminated in closed containment with water drawn from below 25 metres.

350. Conflict of Interest - NL, govt expenditure of $45m into Grieg, Placentia Bay dev is a conflict of interest by a government who has to regulate the industry. I should add that in Norway, the auction cost of the 11 in0ocean licences would be an $88- to $121-million outlay for Grieg, not 11 free licences plus $45 million. They know perfectly well that fish farms are a licence to print money and any government that would charge zero and add $45m, thus conflicting themselves, is an idiot. See: https://www.undercurrentnews.com/2017/03/29/new-coalition-urges-nl-govt-not-to-buy-into-grieg-salmon-project/.

321. Environment Ruined - Chile, rivers, "40 tonnes of dissolved organic substances end up in the rivers for every 50 tonnes of farmed salmon." "In particular, much higher concentrations of carbohydrates, proteins and
their building blocks, and lipids are present downstream of the
facilities. The aquacultures therefore provide the low-nutrient rivers
with a kind of fertilizer boost." "Nevertheless, rivers should not be misused as natural sewage treatment plants," emphasises Norbert Kamjunke." "The researchers also draw another conclusion from their study. They do
not consider it advisable to install any further aquacultures on Chilean
rivers. The authorities have already imposed a moratorium on new salmon
farms in the country's lakes. Operators are now considering the option
of moving the farming of medium-sized salmon from the lakes to the
rivers. "In theory that could work," believes Norbert Kamjunke. "But
from an ecological perspective, it would not be a good idea."" See: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170322094520.htm?utm_source=Watershed+Watch+Email+List&utm_campaign=ead2c4cb2a-Salmon_News_Mar23_2017&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_405944b1b5-ead2c4cb2a-166907249&mc_cid=ead2c4cb2a&mc_eid=5777c92bcd.

314. Untransparent Fish Farm - Cooke, CDN, listen to Fred Griffen: http://www.news957.com/2017/03/21/rick-howe-show-12-p-m-109/. He makes the point that if the disease money paid by taxpayers for diseased, dead fish had been spent on closed containment instead, the industry would already be on land and causing no problems.

246. Trainwreck - Gray Aqua, the 2016 story of all the problems. And we paid for them. Just look at all the millions wasted on this boom/bust company: https://theovercast.ca/there-are-two-sides-to-the-debate-on-salmon-farming-in-newfoundland/. Here is a bit of what they say: "Far from being an ecologically sustainable industry providing
well-paying jobs for rural residents, aquaculture is a
government-subsidized trainwreck resplendent with a comfortable and well
paid cheerleading government aquaculture bureaucracy.The
politicians from the rural ridings are desperate to be able to point at
anything positive in their impoverished rural ridings"

"Your statement concerning the fate of SLICE is pre-emptive,
controversial and could undermine commercial confidence in the
industry," stated another email from the SSPO to SEPA.
"Should you publish this statement in its current format, I suspect
that it will lead to a good deal of media scrutiny which will seek to
undermine the industry’s reputation and will probably damage all of our
reputations," begged SSPO's Chief Executive Scott Landsburgh."

"Throughout this report and a scientific study conducted simultaneously (Cashion et al., 2017),
BLOOM and coauthors show that reduction fisheries are the result of the
massive overexploitation of traditional fish stocks, and that they are
now contributing to the sequential depletion of the very first links of
the food chain, despite their crucial importance for marine ecosystems."

101. Global Stats Bad - Althelia Sustainable Ocean Fund, USAID: https://althelia.com/2016/10/19/althelia-sustainable-ocean-fund-statement/."Collectively, the global ocean covers 70% of our planet, with more
than 350 million jobs linked to the ocean through fishing, aquaculture,
coastal and marine tourism. Ninety percent of the people who derive
their livelihoods from fishing live in developing countries.
However, over-fishing, largely due to poor management is exhausting
this critical common global resource, with 90% of the world’s ocean
fisheries categorized as over exploited or fully exploited. Cumulative
losses from fisheries mismanagement are estimated to be more than US$2.2
trillion over the last thirty years. Further as a result of expanding
coastal population centers, destructive fishing and climate change, the
ocean has also seen a decline of habitats with 35% of global mangrove,
30% of sea grass beds and 50% of coral reefs destroyed.
Conservation International as well as the Environmental Defense Fund
are engaged as strategic partners for the Sustainable Ocean Fund. This
collaboration with leading environmental organizations will ensure the
fund is poised to direct investments into projects that uphold the
highest environmental standards and allow for effective collaboration
with stakeholders, including local communities and governments."

About Me

I won the national RODERICK HAIG- BROWN AWARD, 2016, for environmental writing, largely for this blog (www.fishfarmnews.blogspot.com) that has become a global portal for the environmental damage made by Norwegian-style fish farms.
I won the Art Downs Award for 2012 for sustained and outstanding writing on environmental issues, in my case, fish farms.
The award was based on 10 columns on fish farm issues in the Times Colonist newspaper, three public submissions to the Cohen Commission on Fraser sockeye and this blog.
If you want to book me to speak, for a lecture, talk, or panel on fish farm environmental damage, contact me on this blog by leaving a message on a post.